


to see you right

by sunspeared



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, Femslash February, Fluff, Post-Trespasser
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 05:08:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5954749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunspeared/pseuds/sunspeared
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leliana needs something to do with her time, after the end of one catastrophe and before the beginning of a new one. (Why not travel across four countries, crash a wedding, and visit an old flame?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	to see you right

**Author's Note:**

> Josie/Leliana is The Ship for me. I saw [this fanart](http://kirkwallgirl.tumblr.com/post/138786385009/) and had to write something for it.

The Inquisition was disbanded, with the stroke of a pen.

Cassandra was in the mountains, wrestling bears and rebuilding a fortress; Leliana had thought to join her, but she had had enough rough living to last a lifetime. Adaar had run off to Maker-knew-where with Dagna and Sera, to right the wrongs of Thedas. Vivienne, with whom Leliana had enjoyed a closeness at Skyhold she never might have at court, was Most Holy, now. Solas was at large, but they were in the calm before the storm.

Never mind the rest. Josephine was gone, too. There was the ache.

Josephine had always seen everything that was good and worthy in her, and allowed Leliana to see into her own unworthy places. When it had mattered most—when Josephine had been on the edge of ordering a convenient murder, when Leliana had shut herself up with her ravens for days—they’d held one another back from the brink. 

She liked to think she was well past point where she needed to be _held back._ Still, when a bright yellow envelope appeared among her usual mail, she seized it and tore it open.

One of Leliana’s many aliases was in some way distantly related to one of Josephine’s cousins—by accident, not design. Antivans invited anyone who might possibly be related to them their weddings, from a branch of the family that hared off to Ferelden in the Exalted Age, to obviously fake Orlesian vicomtesses. 

It would be grand. Leliana had not needed to personally infiltrate anything in years.

*

It was barely an infiltration. A secluded, ancestral country estate, recently repurchased by the Lady Montilyet. A preponderance of Crows for security, who either recognized Leliana as the Nightingale, or looked at her and deemed her a non-threat. Three hundred people at the ceremony. Enough food to have fed Skyhold’s population for a month. And brandy. And _gold_. Leliana could hardly see, for all the gold, and all the jewels. It was the rarest feeling, after years of the Game, to feel underdressed at a party, in nothing but pearls and diamonds.

Josephine was at the center of it all, flanked by her siblings: little Yvette, who had flirted so charmingly with Leliana at Halamshiral. The bizarrely tall brothers—Laurien, and the other one, whose name Leliana could never recall—who stood ready to divert their more effusive relatives on their sister’s behalf. 

Through the crowd, Leliana managed to catch her eye, and was rewarded with Josephine’s hand flying to her mouth in shock, and then a glare, and then a secret smile, all in swift succession; and all without Josephine losing the thread of her conversation with some elder stateswoman. Leliana felt her eyes tracking her through the crowd, as she found one of the quiet, deserted retiring rooms.

"You cut your hair," Josephine said, upon walking into the room. 

Not, _You are dripping in pearls, and you look magnificent._ Not an outraged, _I have not heard from you in_ months, _Leliana, and now you turn up?_ But she locked the door behind her. That was promising.

"Only an inch," said Leliana. "It was time for a change."

"Hardly a change." This cool demeanor, this meaningless half-smile was not Josie. It was Lady Montilyet. "Who are you, today?" Josephine asked.

"You know, I don’t quite recall," Leliana said. "Once, I must have needed to be a noble with a distant family connection to Antiva, but the details of the matter escape me at the moment."

"You’re the Vicomtesse Aline de Châtellerault, and the identity doesn’t go much deeper than that. I recognized it for one of yours immediately when I saw it on the guest list." Josephine sighed, and shed her golden half-cloak on the back of a chair, and just like that, Leliana’s friend was back. "I hate this," she said. "It’s exhausting."

The only thing Josephine Montilyet loved more than money, chocolates, being right, and fine leather, was standing at the center of attention. _I’m bored,_ she meant. _As bored as you must be, to have come all the way to Antiva._

"It is… dignified," Leliana said. "The cape. Precisely what a merchant queen should wear."

"It’s been in my family since the Storm Age," said Josephine, "and one would _think_ maman wouldn’t insist on dusting it off at every formal event, and allow it to retire with dignity. One would hope. Is there—any news of Solas, and whatever he has been planning? Any news from Cassandra, or Cullen? Or Adaar? She and Sera sent me a wedding present; I don’t think they realize this isn’t my wedding. I believe Dagna made it. I’ve been keeping it in an iron box, to be safe. And I hear Divine Victoria—"

"Josie," Leliana cut in. "I came to see you, not to discuss world affairs."

"And what," Josephine said, "did you think might happen, when you came here?"

Years of decorously denying themselves, when Josephine had been ambassador. There had been some fumblings in their tent after Haven fell, to ‘keep warm,’ and not at all to affirm that the other was alive. One despoilment on the War Table, in the celebrations after their success at Halamshiral (which had been an excuse for the Inquisition to have a party, more than anything), and a stolen kiss on the Inquisitor’s very private balcony before a late-night talk with her, which the Inquisitor pretended she didn’t walk in on. The sum total of what had been between them, then, which was no guide to what might be between them now, in this new world.

She waited, toying with one of her enormous earrings, while Leliana wrestled with herself. Josephine had always waited, and her answer had always been _Yes_. She should have given up on Leliana years ago, but she had not.

She was the head of her family, now. She had the well-being of hundreds of people to consider, as did Leliana. This was foolishness, she thought, even as she advanced on Josephine. They had responsibilities, and had always had responsibilities, she thought, even as she slid one hand up Josephine’s long neck, to pinion her against the wall. Josephine needed to return to the wedding, before her absence was remarked upon. Leliana needed to be back in Orlais, grooming Charter and Harding to take over her ring of spies, should something happen to her.

There would never be a good time for this. She hadn’t done her part to save Thedas, only to be a coward now. 

"I was thinking—that you and I could find a better party," Leliana said, finally, into the corner of Josephine’s mouth. 

Josephine tested her grip, and apparently found it satisfactory, and still strained to kiss her. "I’m traveling," said she breathlessly, "to Val Royeaux, in a month. To finalize the repurchasing of an old family home. I’ll need to furnish it. And re-establish old ties in the capital. I may be there for a long while."

"Imagine what you and I could do," said Leliana, and this, then, was what it felt to be happy, honestly and unrelievedly happy. To feel a weight lifted off of one’s heart which one had not even known was there. "How long until you need to go back?"

"Ah," Josephine murmured, "Laurien is making my excuses for me. I told him an old friend was visiting, and he _winked_ at me—my own little brother. It’s mortifying."

"I’ll take your mind off it," Leliana said.

"Please," Josephine said. "Do."


End file.
